Black holes provide theoreticians with an important theoretical laboratory to test ideas. Conditions within a black hole are so extreme, that by analyzing aspects of black holes we see space and time in an exotic environment, one that has shed important, and sometimes perplexing, new light on their fundamental nature.

...quantum mechanics—the physics of our world—requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.

No matter how hard you try to teach your cat general relativity, you're going to fail.

According to inflation, the more than 100 billion galaxies, sparkling throughout space like heavenly diamonds, are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky. To me, this realization is one of the greatest wonders of the modern scientific age.

The main challenge that television presents is that I have a tendency to say things with a great deal of precision and accuracy. Often a description of that sort, which will work in a book because people can read it slowly - they can turn the pages back and so on - doesn't really work on TV because it interrupts the flow of the moving image.

I can't stand clutter. I can't stand piles of stuff. And whenever I see it, I basically just throw the stuff away.

All you are is a bag of particles acting out the laws of physics. That to me is pretty clear.